The former governor and Trump official is trying to be a culture warrior and the GOP’s most electable option. The balance isn’t working.
LINCOLN, NH—When Nikki Haley tried to fire up a crowd of New Hampshire voters in late May by slamming Dylan Mulvaney—the transgender influencer who Bud Light controversially partnered with—the presidential hopeful called Mulvaney “a guy, dressed as a girl, making fun of women.”The Granite State crowd seemed mostlyto the Fox News storyline.
At a stop last week in the tiny town of Lincoln—at a NASA and space-themed cafe with room for a crowd of 40—Haley once again had an applause line fall flat around transgender politics. She described trans women in sports as “a massive issue for our girls right now.” The crowd barely reacted. If it’s an issue to GOP voters in New Hampshire, no one has apparently told them, despite conservative media’s best attempts.
Pointing to the operation’s low spending rate and the Haley’s own experience as an accountant as reasons to trust the plan—along with around $17 million in cash on hand for a PAC supporting the only woman candidate in the GOP field—the belief is she’ll be in the best position to get hot at the right time, according to sources familiar with campaign strategy.
But the party, clearly, has not left Trump behind. Aside from some criticism of the former president over Jan. 6, Haley has shirked from making a clear case that it should. Her campaign has offered gentle suggestions of a post-Trump future while declining to really criticize the current front runner.
Despite her efforts, Gray said most of her friends are “still shopping around,” albeit with their own stack of Haley books and campaign literature she’s handed them. Two touchstone data points of presidential politics—polling and fundraising numbers—support the anecdotes doubting Haley’s candidacy. Some Republican operatives and Trump allies have questioned whether Haley’s 2024 bid is more of a ploy to land a vice presidential nod, asOne longtime GOP organizer pointed to a joke Haley made at a recent appearance with her friend
Sometimes voters get a show of Haley’s pre-Trump brand, which emphasizes her rise from obscurity in South Carolina and seems to resonate most. That part of her stump speech features emotionally poignant moments, including a pivotal point
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